On Borrowed Time
by Ash10
Summary: A brief respite from war is followed by a one-man mission for Sergeant Chip Saunders, the success of which is jeopardized by a sudden, life-threatening and all too common, illness.


Rated for some sexual content; nothing too racy.

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On Borrowed Time

Laughing, full of life and rediscovered joy, she threw herself into the surprised sergeant's arms and kissed him with quite a bit more than simple thanks.

Part of a liberating force, the combined companies of Baker, Charlie and King, Sergeant Saunders, his lieutenant, Hanley, and the squad were being hailed as heroes. It was a most pleasant diversion for the battle-weary soldiers and they took advantage of the situation to the best of their abilities – mostly by chasing wine bottles or skirts or more happily, both.

Saunders had his hands full and being only human and young and male he was thoroughly enjoying himself. Her mouth was warm, her body eager as it pressed seductively against his. He returned her kisses with enthusiasm until teasingly, she broke away, grabbed the helmet from his head and ran, still laughing, flashing the G.I. a length of long leg beneath a short full skirt. He did what any guy in his boots would do; he gave chase until she allowed him to catch her.

Again laughing, teasing, kissing him, she drew Saunders away from the melee of celebration, down a narrow side street and into what had, until recently, been a tiny barn housing goats and chickens. The place was pleasantly cool and dark, quiet, scented with new hay. Saunders dropped the Thompson; his gun belt followed. The town was totally secure. There was no need for vigilance or haste. These moments were his.

The girl pulled him down onto the hay, onto her. The laughter gone now, she was all seriousness. As lonely and starved for affection as the young sergeant, she allowed herself to forget. These moments were hers as well.

She unbuttoned his jacket and the shirt beneath; slender fingers ran lightly through the thick dark blond hair matting his chest. Her eyes, deep brown, were unreadable in the dim light. Her intentions were otherwise.

His hands slid beneath her blouse and he found the skin soft, the scent of her inviting, feminine and sensual. His mouth bruised her lips, becoming gentle against her throat and breasts. She arched up into him, murmuring soft words in breathless French he could not understand and could not misread. Their union was swift, hard and passionate and left Chip Saunders exhausted in a way he found most acceptable. He slept, her head pillowed against his bare shoulder, dreamless, comforted.

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Nearly two months passed and other incidents overshadowed that precious brief interlude. Saunders never asked the girl's name, nor she his and that was fine with him. He didn't need a name to remember.

He was on a one man recon; had infiltrated deeply into German-held territory to gather information on a suspected munitions dump. Three days of fruitless search before hitting pay dirt left him tired and concerned, not for himself, though he'd dodged more than one enemy patrol, but for the data scrawled onto the map he carried within his left boot and which was desperately needed.

More than tired, he was sick, had felt it coming on before he'd left Company, and wisely or not, he'd kept the information from Hanley. Saunders knew he was the best man for the job. It was not braggadocio, but only fact. A less experienced soldier never would've located the dump, let alone made it back nearly 20 miles. But Saunders was not back yet.

"Just a cold," he lied to himself as he stopped a moment to rest, leaning against a tree, not trusting himself to sit, afraid he wouldn't make it back to his feet. Pulling out his canteen, he took a long swallow, almost immediately losing the fluid as he began to retch, endlessly. Falling to his knees, Thompson at his side, he shook with sickness, tears standing out in his eyes, running down dirt-smeared cheeks. When the spasms finally eased, Saunders wrapped his arms tightly across his body and moaned low into the ache. He gave it a minute and one more before reaching for the machine gun, grabbing for the tree trunk and hauling his protesting body upright.

Needles of pain shot into his head directly behind his eyes, blurring his vision. He broke out in cold sweats and his stomach heaved, yet he had to go on. There was no choice. Hanley, G-2, needed the information. Rain began to fall, soaking him to the skin and the chills worsened along with the fever and nausea. There was no way he'd make it back to Company before nightfall.

Stumbling blindly, the sergeant knew he had to find shelter. He had to survive. Should he die out here, in the middle of God only knew where, the information he carried would be lost forever.

A rambling farmhouse, dimly lit, beckoned, drew him through a postage stamp-sized grove of denuded apple trees and the surrounding copse of blackberry bushes long bare of fruit or leaves. November was a miserable month – in Saunders' own Illinois and his France – cold, wet, lacking joy or promise.

Cradling the Thompson across one arm, the sergeant made the steps only to fall heavily into the door jamb. Forcing his fingers into a fist, he knocked on the door, again and again. After an endless wait, it swung slowly inward. A face appeared, that of a man past middle age, a face on a reed-thin body. Eyes appraised the bedraggled intruder and before Saunders could speak, to ask for help, the door slammed shut.

Strength gone, resolve lost to fever, exhaustion and a pain-wracked body, Chip Saunders sank to his knees against the jamb. He'd made it as far as he could and his world dissolved into bleak despair.

Words were exchanged in the house, heatedly, the man and a woman, his wife, arguing. The wife won, this time, not by pleading or anger, but by evoking the past. Cautiously, the door was opened. Hands pulled the soldier inside. Other hands retrieved the Thompson. The door was closed and bolted.

The woman spread an ancient feather bed on the floor near the fireplace, covering it with a bleached white sheet. While her husband held Saunders up against his chest, she unbuckled the web belt, unbuttoned the jacket and shirt, stripping off both and toweling the shivering body dry. The clothes, weapons and gear would be dried, rolled into a blanket and hidden beneath loose boards in the floor. Between the couple, they laid the American on the pallet and covered him with a quilt. Tenderly, motherly, the woman tucked the fabric tightly beneath the young soldier, using the towel to dry his wet face and soaked hair. She crooned to him, smiling into blue eyes that could not see her; whispering words of comfort he could not comprehend.

Saunders moaned softly, rocking his aching body in a comforting rhythm. The fire before him danced and shimmied, mesmerizing, hypnotizing. Cool hands were on him. His mother's face swam before his eyes; silky pale hair done up in a chignon, hazel eyes, more green than not, mirroring her worry. She held a spoon to his lips, but even with her tender coaxing he could not bring himself to take the soup it held.

"No, Mom…I don't want it," he slurred.

Again she coaxed, her voice pleading, her words eluding him. The spoon touched his lips and giving in, he accepted it. Immediately, his stomach revolted, but the broth stayed down. Two more spoonfuls followed and Saunders would take no more. The motherly voice seemed pleased. The cool hand rested against his forehead, followed back through the disheveled blond hair. He slept in a fever-induced nightmare and awoke, a scream lodge in his throat.

A face wavered before him – a woman's face, but not his mother's. This face was seamed with lines of exhaustion, gaunt from near starvation, the hair coarse and mousey brown shot through with gray – the eyes nearly black.

But as with all mothers, there was concern there, and love. He was not her son. Her son was dead this long year past, killed by the Bosch, but this young American was someone's son and he was hers now – hers on borrowed time. She would care for him as gently as she hoped someone might have cared for her own dear boy.

She tried to quiet his fears, his feverish ravings, but could not and called on her husband to try. He wanted to send for their neighbor, a member of the underground and fluent in English. The woman nodded. "Hurry!" she implored.

The slender Frenchman leaned over the barely conscious Saunders and against the woman's protests, shook him roughly by the shoulders.

The sergeant whimpered at the assault, but sluggishly he opened his eyes. "Caje?" Saunders whispered as the face blurred and ran and all he could make out was a black beret perched jauntily on a dark head.

"Sergeant…wake up now. I'm here to help you. I can get word to your commanding officer through the underground. Sergeant?" The voice was deep and heavily accented.

"You…you're not Caje…who are you?" Saunders protested the hands on him, pushing them weakly off. The woman's voice was raised in alarm. There was a sharp rebuke and then silence.

The voice turned gentle. "I am not Caje. I am Maurice. I only want to help."

Saunders strained to make out the face. For a moment it all came together and his thoughts cleared. "How do I know…how do I know I can trust you?" he countered.

Maurice shrugged. "You don't, Sergeant. But I can help. I will help. You are very sick. I can contact your people – get you home. Tell me your outfit, your commanding officer. I need no other information. Trust me. Tell me."

Saunders closed his eyes, too ill to have more than a passing concern as to whether this Maurice was telling the truth. He fought the illness, but it sapped his strength, his will and his heart. "361st Infantry, 2nd Battalion, King Company…Captain Jampel."

Influenza was an indiscriminate killer. Half the company had come down with it and fully one fourth had died. Poor conditions, too much time lost in getting medical treatment, limited antibiotics and medicines all contributed, but fatigue was the clincher. And Saunders had long ago passed the point of being just fatigued.

The next 24 hours found Saunders delirious and hallucinating. Again it was his mother's face he saw; her voice he heard. He refused to take any nourishment and his fever spiked. The woman sponged his flushed face, turning the quilt down to cool his chest and arms. He murmured, spoke to a family thousands of miles away, answering his mother's questions in a voice belonging to the innocent young man he was not long before, but would never be again. He smiled at her touch, the crooning words, that, in his delirium, were the words he longed to hear.

The woman cried openly as she held the sergeant's head up on her lap. Despite her care he continued to worsen. He talked non-stop, senselessly, she guessed. His throat was so dry the words were little more than hoarse whispers.

Noise on the porch, a quiet knock and her husband ushered four men into the house – Maurice and three American soldiers. With a minimum of introductions, Doc and Lieutenant Hanley knelt at Saunders' side while Caje questioned the man and woman.

Saunders' clothes and equipment were produced and searched for the information he carried. Caje took Hanley's place at the sergeant's side while the officer used the radio to call in and relay the necessary map coordinates.

Voices, familiar, overlapped, and Saunders was being touched, covers flung back, arm pulled straight, a needle prick, warmth, a lessening of pain in his bones and joints and muscles. Then came questions his mind was too dulled to answer. A stethoscope was placed against his chest; he was rolled onto his side and the instrument moved across his back and over both lungs. Gentle hands felt for fever, and then palpitated the tautly swollen glands at his throat and the back of his neck. Saunders allowed it all. There was no choice. There was no strength left to offer any protest. Soon the voices drifted off, the covers were settled back around him, tucked protectively in, and he was allowed to sleep.

When he dreamt now there were no nightmares. It was _her_ voice he heard in words he understood; _her_ sweet pretty face the one he saw.

"Do you ever think of me, my sergeant? Dream of Me? Is my scent on your clothing? Is it my image in your heart? Did you love me?"

He reached up to touch her face, but she remained somehow just out of reach – unattainable.

"I think of you," he confided. "I do. I'm no poet…no good with words…but I loved you. Part of me…." The words trailed off.

She smiled and drew a gentle caress through his hair, down his cheek to his chest where she felt the reassuring beat of his heart. He closed his eyes waiting for the kiss that never came.

For a long time there was nothing.

Soft light filtered through the chinks between the shutters as morning broke. Saunders watched the room brighten until finally it was light enough for him to see his surroundings. His vision was mostly unclear and his head and body ached, but he was relatively awake and aware, more so than he had been.

A hand touched his wrist feeling for the pulse and Doc's face entered his line of vision. The young medic smiled, shifting his hand to the sergeant's forehead.

"Still a little feverish, Sarge. Think you can handle some water?"

Saunders nodded, carefully, and accepted a single sip from the canteen, waited to see how his stomach would react, then hazarded several more small swallows before closing his eyes and falling back to sleep.

The next time he woke it was to the household getting ready for the day. His gaze wandered to the fire burning down in the grate and to the table beside the stone hearth. On it sat a photograph of a dark-haired, unsmiling, very young man. Though no smile played across the thin lips, the expression in the boy's eyes was less than serious.

Between them, Doc and the woman got Saunders ready to move out. She buttoned him into his shirt and jacket while Doc readied a fresh bottle of glucose and connected it.

Saunders stared up into the woman's careworn face as if tying to memorize each line, each detail. Her eyes were familiar. He frowned until he made the connection. They were the eyes of the boy in the photograph.

Before Caje and Doc lifted the makeshift stretcher, the woman leaned down and with a hand on either side of Saunders' face she pressed her lips to his forehead, then rested her cheek against his pale hair – so different than her own son's, the man himself so different, but in the end, not. Saunders reached up, took her hand in his and held on. She squeezed the cold fingers between her warm palms, then rested his hand back across his chest and covered him with the wool blanket Doc provided. Hanley's voice came as if from a great distance. Saunders' sight blurred and his senses deadened.

As his condition improved there were no more dreams – good or bad. Reality would intrude soon enough; at least he'd be alive to experience it. He'd miss the dreams, the good ones, but in the long run he figured the trade more than equitable.

END


End file.
